Aye, this body’s earned every ache tonight. I was down in the Minoc mines again, same tunnel that smells like wet stone and old sweat, swinging that pick until my shoulders burned. The rhythm of it—crack, scrape, crack—gets in your blood after a while, like a drum only miners hear. I’d already hauled two full packs to the mine forge near the east road, where the anvil’s dented from years of clumsy hands like mine. But the third trip, halfway back with nearly fifty ingots weighing me down, my foot caught on a root jutting from the wall. I went down hard, knee slamming into the rock, and for a second I just sat there, listening to the echo of the fall bounce through the tunnel. The pack shifted, but didn’t split. Thank the gods for thick Minoc leather.
I remember sitting in that damp silence, one hand on a cold iron bar, the other pressing into the grit beneath me. The candle on my belt flickered low, casting my shadow huge and crooked against the stone. It wasn’t the fall that stung—it was the thought of starting over, of breaking ore just to feed a forge that never stays lit more than a few hours. My tongs snapped two days back, red-hot iron slipping into the ash, and I still haven’t scraped together enough to buy proper ones. I sat there longer than I should’ve, breathing in that deep earth smell, wondering if this is all there is—swinging steel, selling low, buying back the same tools, again and again.
But then I thought of the old smith near the Warriors Guild, the one who once traded a chipped scimitar for a stack of copper ingots. He’s got a fire that never dies and eyes that’ve seen a hundred men give up. And I thought, maybe tomorrow I bring him six good iron bars, not for coin, but for a lesson. Maybe I learn to bend the metal right, so it holds. So I hold.
So I stood. Readjusted the pack. And walked. One foot in front of the other, iron heavy on my back, but lighter in spirit.
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